Campus Decorum : The realisation of apologies, complaints and requests by Nigerian and German students

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C ampus Decorum: The realisation of apologies, complaints and requests by Nigerian and German students

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Languages & Literatures

(Programme: Language – Interaction – Culture) in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of

Master of Arts (M.A.)

By

Glory Essien Otung

Supervisors:

PD Dr. Eric Anchimbe Dr. Irina Turner

2019

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Declaration

I hereby affirm that I have produced the thesis at hand without any inadmissible help from a third party or the use of resources other than those cited; ideas incorporated directly or indirectly from other sources are clearly marked as such. In addition, I affirm that I have neither used the services of commercial consultants or intermediaries in the past, nor will I use such services in the future. The thesis in the same or similar form has hitherto not been presented to another examining authority in Germany or abroad, nor has it been published.

Bayreuth, 18.11.2019 Glory Essien Otung

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Dedication

To Mama, Who accompanied this work to successful completion before taking Her well-deserved Rest.

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List of tables

Table 1 Group 1 – Nigerian university students in Nigeria (NS)

Table 2 Group 2 – German university students in Bayreuth, Germany (GS) Table 3 Group 3 – Nigerian students at the University of Bayreuth (NSB)

Table 4 Towns of residence and first languages of participants in NS, GS and NSB Table 5 Attention getter and greeting structures used by NS and GS in situation 1 Table 6 Attention getters and greeting structures used by NS and GS in situation 2 Table 7 Attention getter and greeting structures used by NS and GS in situation 3 Table 8 Apology strategies used by Nigerian and German students in situation 1 Table 9 Apology strategies used by Nigerian and German students in situation 2 Table 10 Request strategies used by NS and GS in situation 1

Table 11 Request strategies used by NS and GS in situation 2

Table 12 Request strategies used by Nigerian and German students in situation 3

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List of figures

Figure 1 Frequency of use of address forms in by NS and GS in situations 1, 2 and 3 Figure 2 Four most preferred attention getter and greeting structures by NS and GS in

situations 1, 2 and 3

Figure 3 Frequency of use of complaint strategies by NS and GS in situation 3

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List of abbreviations

NS Nigerian university students in Nigeria

GS German university students at the University of Bayreuth NSB Nigerian university students at the University of Bayreuth NE Nigerian English

GE German English

DCT Discourse Completion Task FSA Face-saving act

FTA Face-threatening act

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1 Introduction

This research is a cross-cultural assessment of the linguistic performance of decorum by three groups of university students in two target campus contexts. The three groups of students are Nigerian university students in Nigeria (henceforth NS), German university students at the University of Bayreuth (henceforth GS) and Nigerian university students at the University of Bayreuth (henceforth NSB). The two target campus contexts are Nigeria and Germany.

Therefore, the reference to these countries in this work will follow this context.

The work is presented in six chapters. The first chapter is assigned to the introduction, background and literature review, in which postcolonial studies on the use of English and the concept of politeness in Africa are discussed. The second chapter states the theoretical framework on which this research is based. The third chapter concerns the data, methods, challenges to methods and analytical concepts. In the fourth and fifth chapters, the results are presented and discussed. Finally, the sixth chapter gives the conclusion and recommendations.

1.1 Background

Education has been a major reason for international mobility around the world. It contributes immensely to globalisation in several ways. Academic institutions boast of international presence in their classrooms. The presence of international students increases their attractiveness to prospective international students. On the one hand, there is an expectation of solidarity with other foreign students on the ground. On the other hand, there is a perception of the intercultural competence of staff in such institutions. Therefore, most study abroad candidates would prefer one of such institutions for ease in the adaptation process.

However, international presence in academic institutions is a kind of coin with two sides to it.

While the visiting students and their host institutions project an all-positive perspective to it, there is an undeniable reality that awaits their encounters: the adaptation dilemma. All university campuses are established for the same purpose of learning, research and knowledge creation. Therefore, on the level of objectives, campuses belong to the academic context. However, on the level of the process of achieving these objectives, in which

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communication plays a vital role, campuses’ cultural contexts depend on the social backgrounds of members of each campus. This reveals the transfer of social behaviours from host cultural contexts to academic institutions. It is important to note that the social behaviour captured in the use of the term decorum in this work is the culture of respect (Schneider, 1998). Campus decorum in this regard often mirrors wider society decorum intermixed with academic institutional norms. Consequent upon this, a campus is a community with a mix of social and professional norms of behaviour. These norms set the frames for politeness in interactions. The mix is even more complex on international campuses. Hence, intercultural awareness is recommendable as an addition to academic qualification in chosen fields of (further) studies in international education. In agreement with Baker (2011), intercultural awareness here refers to the linguistic and social behavioural tools necessary for intercultural competence. Using a postcolonial perspective to conduct a cross-cultural analysis on dialogues constructed by university students from two varied academic cultures, Nigeria and Germany, this research seeks to contribute to the tools relevant for intercultural campus encounters that involve Nigerian students.

1.2 Aims of the research

The major aim of this research is to demonstrate the differences between appropriate linguistic behaviour towards lecturers by students in the Nigerian and in the German academic cultures. This will illustrate the relativity of the universal social concepts of politeness. I will first illustrate similarities and differences between the choices of conversation openers, closing statements and realisations strategies of apologies, complaints and requests by NS and GS. Second, I will elaborate on the sociocultural norms that guide NS’ communication styles with their lecturers in Nigeria. And third, I will assess the transfer of NS’ preferred opener strategies in emails written by NSB to their lecturers during their first semester.

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1.3 Previous pragmatics studies with postcolonial perspective

Postcolonial pragmatics is relatively new. It is an analytical framework for investigating the realities of postcolonial communities. In this section, the focus will be only on previous publications that are directly related to the scope of this research. Also, all postcolonial contexts cannot be studied in this work. Thus, attention is paid here to the African postcolonial contexts. Several pragmatic phenomena have caught the attention of scholars within this context, especially, language use and politeness strategies in greeting, face, naming, and other speech acts, etc.

1.3.1 Studies on the use of English in postcolonial Africa

The study of the pragmatics of African Englishes is built on the premise that these varieties already exist in their own right. Several studies have proven this, among them, Gut (2005) who illustrates that there is tone differentiation in three major Nigerian languages, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. These differentiations also influence the system of Nigerian English (henceforth NE). For Gut and Fuchs (2013), NE uses progressives in a way peculiar in the Nigerian context. Adegbija (1989a) identifies five classes of lexico-semantic features of NE, namely, transfer, analogy, acronyms, semantics shift, and coinage. Each class denotes uniqueness and stresses the need to avoid the temptation of assumed global intelligibility of the English language. Similar divergent trends have been found in neighbouring varieties of English like Cameroon English by Bobda (1994), Anchimbe (2006), Kouega (2006), Mbangwana and Sala (2009); Ghanaian English by Sey (1973) and Adjaye (2005), etc. Some of these variety- specific features have been written into dictionaries, for instance, NE (Igboanusi, 2002) and Cameroon English (Kouega, 2007). Hence, there are new standards which govern English usage in these societies. Several pragmatic works on postcolonial societies have proven the non-universality of western pragmatic theories like Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory, notions of positive and negative face, etc. Accordingly, Adegbija (1989b) finds that the positive and negative face advocated by Brown and Levinson (1987) is not an appropriate interpretative framework for data from postcolonial societies.

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1.3.2 Studies on politeness in postcolonial societies

Apart from language use, face and politeness strategies have also been analysed in African contexts: Igbo culture in Nigeria (Nwoye, 1992), Zulu culture in Southern Africa (de Kadt, 1998 and Grainger et al., 2010), and the Caribbean (Mühleisen and Migge, 2005) among others.

Greeting is a strategy for negotiating face. Unlike in western societies, for instance, the German where a short-lived smile suffices as greeting not only to strangers but also to acquaintances, in most African contexts explicit culturally- appropriate greeting is required for every contact, communicative event and with most acquaintances, irrespective of how long the greeting ritual takes. Akindele (1990) confirms this for the Yorubas and Nwoye (1993) for the Igbos in Nigeria. Address forms usually accompany greetings in a postcolonial context.

Ogorji (2009) assesses the possible appellations used for decorum in the attempt to avoid name-calling among the Igbos in Nigeria. His list ranges from traditional and social titles to kinship terms. The use of kinship terms such as ‘uncle’ in Cameroon (Anchimbe, 2008) and

‘aunty’ in the Caribbean (Mühleisen, 2011) for non-relatives and even strangers is very typical of other postcolonial societies as well including India and Singapore (Wong, 2006). An addressee should be capable of discerning when to interpret literally or figuratively because address forms do not only show respect; they also hint on social responsibilities expected from the addressee (Anchimbe, 2010). Not just names and titles but also verbs and expressions are vehicles for performing illocutionary acts.

Kasanga (2006) analyses requests in Black South African English. He illustrates how pragmatic strategies are carried over from the indigenous background into English. Sidnell (2005) reports on Indo-Guyanese advice strategies. Drescher (2012) finds the act of advising in Cameroon to be direct in contrast to western indirect styles of performing the same speech act. Obeng (1999) admits that apology, though a face-saving act in which one would expect explicit illocutionary devices, is realised either in complex or compound forms among the Akan in Ghana. The complex form combines explicit and implicit strategies, whereas the compound form doubles or multiplies implicit strategies. The question would be if such behaviour would not cause misunderstandings and further face-threats to the offender. Among the Akan people in Ghana, the answer is ‘no’. Analysing the same speech act (apology) in South Africa, Kasanga and Lwanga-Lumu (2007) discover that the repair strategy is preferred. This is explicable in the interlocutor’s aim of making amends for the restoration of social harmony.

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Interestingly, their data captures nonverbal communicative acts, which reveal the norm in bottom-up academic situations. Some of the features on their non-verbal politeness frameworks such as kneeling and more distance are linguistically performed in the dialogues analysed in this study — non-verbal positions as will be discussed in the analytical chapters.

Lastly, Anchimbe (2018) gives a detailed, pragmatic analysis of the act of making and refusing offers in Ghana and Cameroon. The methods adopted in this research (see Section 3.3) follow Kasanga and Lwanga-Lumu (2007) and Anchimbe (2018).

In postcolonial societies where multiple indigenous languages co-exist with English in complex multilingual and multicultural ways, it is normal that western pragmatic ideologies and theories would be insufficient for analysing postcolonial linguistic behaviours since these theories are based on western contexts, which are mostly projected to be monolingual and monocultural. No matter how they are adapted to suit these contexts, their suitability has often not been satisfactory (for more, see Nwoye 1992, Janney 2009, Anchimbe and Janney 2011, Anchimbe 2018). That is why new frameworks like postcolonial pragmatics have been designed, considering the complex multilingualism and multiculturalism of these societies. As explained below, this thesis adopts this framework for the analysis of the data collected.

2 Theoretical framework and research questions

This chapter consists of four sections. The first concerns are the various linguistic expressions of the concept of politeness in some Nigerian languages and in the German language. In the second, I discuss the relativity of the bottom-up relationship between students and lecturers and of the frames of politeness in the target academic contexts in this study. The third section is focused on the framework with which the analysis in this work is carried out. And the research questions that guide the analysis are presented in the fourth section.

2.1 Postcolonial Pragmatics

This emerging framework for pragmatic analysis of postcolonial data pays attention to the realities of multilingual postcolonial societies as well as the hybrid nature of their languages resulting from regular language contacts and rivalry (Janney, 2009; Anchimbe and Janney, 2011). It recognises the state of linguabridity, in which people are constantly “living with,

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routinely using, and having identity bonds to languages from competing or conflicting cultures” (Anchimbe 2007: 66). As a result, most children are raised with more than one language, in which case the mainstream concept of the first language or mother tongue would have to be pluralised (Mforteh, 2007) as is evident in the data from Nigerian participants as opposed to the majority from the German participants. Also, pragmatic phenomena in these societies are not as limited as in the predominantly individualistic and egalitarian culture in Germany. For instance, the attention to age, gender, and social status during interpersonal interactions are more conspicuous in the Nigerian setting than in the German setting. Family, community, health, finance, religion and other sociocultural factors influence the social values in postcolonial African societies. These values culminate into norms, which suggests that certain social roles and responsibilities are attributed to members of these communities according to age, gender and social status. Members strategically communicate and perform their roles in verbal and non-verbal acts for the purpose of harmonious cohabitation since collectivism is generally the social norm. Accounting for these phenomena in the assessment of members’ strategic communication styles is enabled by the descriptive and interpretative emic approach advocated in the postcolonial pragmatic framework. For this reason, it is the major analytical framework of this study.

2.2 The concept of politeness in postcolonial Nigeria

Politeness as a social concept is a well-known and well-used phenomenon across cultures.

Every group of people, family, ethnic, social, professional or political etc., has a yardstick for determining behavioural patterns of members that are considered appropriate or not. Speech communities have expressions for this concept, be it in word(s), phrase(s), or sentence(s). In a multilingual country like Nigeria, there are numerous expressions for politeness. In my first languages, Annang, Ibibio and Efik (all with varied features but mutually intelligible), it is called eti ido. The phrase means good (eti) behaviour (ido). Its opposite is idiok ido, also literally translated as bad (idiok) behaviour (ido). A person with idiok ido is not regarded as a team player in the game of social cohesion. Eti ido is a favourite unisex name in our communities.

This is important to note because a name is given to a baby according to past events or present occurrence(s) at birth of the baby or future expectations in the life of the baby. As a name, the phrase is contracted and written with an initial capital letter, thus Etido. In the Nigerian social

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context, people’s impression about a child is important to the parents of the child. Therefore, some parents name their children Etido in the expectation that their children will be said to behave well in their society. Another name related to Etido is Emaido, which means that people like good behaviour. An adage often used in Annang goes thus: Awo ayaiya mbuk akan idem. This Annang adage is synonymous with its Yoruba counterpart iwalewa; character is beauty (for more on iwalewa see Abiodun, 1983). One of the many Yoruba expressions for politeness is ibowo. There are several English words and phrases that the Yorubas use in expressing their concept of ibowo, namely, respect, to pay respect, to rever an elder, reverential behaviour towards an elder. The Igbos have the same construct, ezigbo omume and same literal translation as the Annangs, good behaviour, in referring to the concept of politeness. In the case of the German linguistic context, Höfflichkeit would suffice, since this research assumes a postcolonial perspective with the aim of elaborating the Nigerian social context. It is important to note at this point that Nigeria and Germany are considered in this work as social systems and not necessarily as national political territories. The social concept of politeness can be expressed linguistically or non-linguistically. This research focuses on the former. Relevant to the study of linguistic expressions of politeness norms are the theories of speech acts (Austin, 1962; Searle 1969, 1979) and communicative acts (Trosborg, 1995) which acknowledge the performative functions of verbs and sentences in their contexts of use.

Cultural factors influence the use of language. Hence, whether the features used in the realisation of linguistic performance are polite or impolite is determined by the context of communication.

2.3 Relativity of Politeness

Ayelola and Alabi’s (2018:2) use of the phrase “good manners” to define politeness suits the various Nigerian politeness concepts above. As they rightly state, politeness “is a culturally defined phenomenon, and therefore what is considered polite in one culture can sometimes be quite rude or simply eccentric in another cultural context.” It is the focus of this study to find out the linguistic behaviours considered by university students as polite in two different cultural contexts, Nigeria and Germany, if politeness is differently perceived in same situations, and the implication of these differences in intercultural encounters between members of these two cultural contexts. Linguistic realisation of politeness requires

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communicative competence beyond semantic language proficiency to sociocultural competence (Cohen et al. calls. Trosborg (1995) refers to the concept of politeness as sociolinguistic competence and explains this to mean

the sociocultural rules of use, i.e. the system of rules which determines the appropriateness of a given utterance in a given social context.’ This area of competence was divided into two aspects: appropriateness of form (pragmalinguistic competence) an appropriateness of meaning in social context (sociopragmatic competence). (Trosborg 1995:37)

While Brown and Levinson (1987) emphasise that politeness is strategically realised to protect an individualistic dual (positive and negative) face, it is only appropriately applicable in the German context, where egalitarianism is a norm. Face in postcolonial Africa has been reported to indicate both individual and collective face (Nwoye, 1992; de Kadt 1998). Factors such as age, gender, social status, kinship, ethnic group, religion, and even political affiliation influence politeness in the Nigerian context. Nigerian university campuses are not an exception. These pragmatic factors play vital roles in defining student-lecturer relationships. They also determine politeness levels in student-lecturer conversations, which in turn guide the choice of strategies in communication. In the Nigerian context, university lecturers are highly esteemed. They occupy a high social status and are, therefore, treated with respect in society.

A combination of this high social status with age and gender, etc., gives them an advantage over the students.

The German academic cultural context, in which student-lecturer relationship is also bottom- up, is like the wider cultural context, more egalitarian in nature than the Nigerian context.

Therefore, these factors are not as decisive in student-lecturer communication as they are in the Nigerian context. Student-lecturer relationship may be universally asymmetric. However, its bottom-up status is relative within and across cultural contexts. Therefore, a Nigerian student’s realisation of face-saving (henceforth FSA) or face-threatening (henceforth FTA) speech act towards her/his lecturer is to be understood beyond the individualistic face want typical of western pragmatic frameworks. Hence, postcolonial pragmatics (Anchimbe and Janney, 2011 and 2017) will offer a suitable and efficient framework for discussing NS’

dialogues while politeness theory (Brown and Levinson, 1978) will fit GS’ dialogues. However, as described in the data analysis section of this thesis, the same analytical tools will be used in categorising both sets of data for the credibility of results.

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2.4 Research questions

The analysis in this research will seek answers to the following questions:

1. In their communication with their lecturers, what strategies do NS and GS prefer in realising apologies, complaints and requests?

2. What are the social norms invoked by NS in their preferred strategies and how are they perceived by their lecturers?

3. Given that NS and GS share the same institutional contexts, namely academic space, do NSB transfer NS’ preferred conversation openers strategies to their international student- lecturer communication experience? If yes, does this cause irritation? If yes, how do NSB and their lecturers at the University of Bayreuth achieve repair?

3 Data and methods

In this chapter, I will present the participants and their details in relation to the pragmatic approach of this work, data and methods, contextualisation of analytical terms and challenges to methods.

3.1 Participants

Criteria for participation were nationality and student status. There are three groups of participants with a total number of 108; 50 NS (Group 1), 50 GS (Group 2) and 8 NSB (Group 3). Tables 1, 2 and 3 give a summary of respondents’ personal details in each group, respectively. The decision to include these 8 NSB was to compare real data with the findings from the DCT questionnaires. Emails will be analysed to compare NS’ preferred conversation opener strategies with NSB’s. Irritation and repair strategies will be briefly discussed based on collected NSB meta-information.

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Table 1: Group 1 – Nigerian university students in Nigeria (NS)

Age range Females Males Total

________________ _______________ _______________

No. % No. % No. %

___________________________________________________________________________

20-25 years 8 16% 4 8% 12 24%

26-30 years 9 18% 11 22% 20 40%

31-35 years 7 14% 4 8% 11 22%

36-40 years 3 6% 1 2% 4 8%

40+ years - - 3 6% 3 6%

Total 27 54% 23 46% 50 100%

Table 2: Group 2 – German university students in Bayreuth, Germany (GS)

Age range Female Male Total

______________ ______________ _______________

No. % No. % No. %

20-25 years 24 48% 23 46% 47 94%

26-30 years 1 2% 1 2% 2 4%

31-35 years 1 2% - - 1 2%

36-40 years - - - -

40+ years - - - -

Total 26 52% 24 48% 50 100%

Table 3: Group 3 – Nigerian students at the University of Bayreuth (NSB)

Age range Female Male Total

______________ ______________ _______________

No. % No. % No. %

20-25 years - - - - - -

26-30 years 4 50% 1 12.5% 5 62.5%

31-35 years 2 25% - - 2 25%

36-40 years 1 12.5% - - 1 12.5%

40+ years - - - -

Total 7 87.5% 1 12.5% 8 100%

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In table 4, there are interesting aspects of participants’ personal information that are of relevance to the analysis. The first notable point is the difference in the total number of towns of residence indicated by members of groups 1 and 2.

Table 4: Towns of residence and first languages of participants in Group 1, 2 and 3

Group Town of Residence First language

Group 1 Abia Igbo

Abuja, Federal Capital Territory Annang, Igbo, Yoruba Nigerian English, Ibibio Agbor, Bayelsa State Ogosa, Anioma

Anambra Igbo

Bayelsa Ogbia

Bori-Ogoni, Bayelsa State Khana

Enugu Igbo, Nigerian English

Ibadan, Oyo State Igbo

Ilorin, Kwara State Yoruba, Nigerian English

Jos, Plateau State Hausa, Taroh

Katsina Hausa

Kuje, Abuja Shuwa

Lagos, Lagos State Yoruba, Nigerian English, Idoma

Lokoja, Kogi State Igala

Makurdi, Benue State Annang, Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Bekwarra, Nupe

Owerri, Imo State Igbo

Sango Ota, Ogun State Nigerian English

Suleja, Niger State Yoruba

___________________________________________________________________________

Group 2 Bayreuth German

Kemnath Bayerisch, German

Kirchenlaibach German

Stockau German

Wiesenthal German

___________________________________________________________________________

Group 3 Bayreuth Igbo, Yoruba, Urogbo, Edo ___________________________________________________________________________

The 50 NS in two target university campuses, University of Abuja and Federal University of Agriculture Makurdi, indicate that they live in 18 towns, while the 50 GS from the University of Bayreuth indicate just 6 towns of residence. Two sociocultural factors are responsible for

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this huge difference in place of residence between the Nigerians and Germans. Firstly, child independence or adulthood is perceived in Nigeria quite differently from how the Germans perceive it. Most NS still live with their parents and consider their parents’ homes as their resident addresses. Hostels are regarded as temporary accommodations during school sessions. Most hostels are closed during holidays and students are expected to return home.

In Germany, however, students leave their parents’ home quite earlier than the Nigerians do.

They regard their hostels as their homes and easily give their hostel addresses as their resident addresses. The German rule of registering new addresses within two weeks of relocation¹ is also a key factor. Also, hostels are not closed from students during holidays. The second thing to note is the list of first languages. The NS, this time including the 8 in Bayreuth, have written down a total of 19 first languages. Only one GS speaks Bayerisch and German. The rest of the GS have only German as their first language. This confirms the popular projection of western cultural contexts as monolingual and the postcolonial ones as multilingual. Another interesting information by some NS is the recognition of English as their first language. Note that NE replaces students’ indication of English, for the purpose of clarity. In fact, one NS writes only NE as first language. There are several other Nigerian children in this class of mother tongue speakers of the NE, who most often do not speak any indigenous Nigerian language. This hints on the evolving realities of the contemporary postcolonial societies, where urbanisation contributes to language change, shift and probably death. These details give a foretaste to the richness of the data collected from these two target groups for this research.

3.2 Data

Primary data are used for analysis in this thesis, and they are in two categories. The first is made up of dialogues constructed by the 50 NS at two campuses in Nigeria (the University of Abuja and the Federal University of Agriculture Makurdi) and the 50 GS at the University of Bayreuth. In the postcolonial pragmatic context of this work, this means a set of postcolonial and western data, respectively. However, the second set implies postcolonial diaspora data.

These are excerpts from 30 electronic mails (henceforth emails) written by 8 Nigerian students at the University of Bayreuth. Some of these 8 students included meta-information on their

1Bundes Ministerium des Innern, für Bau und Heimat. 2019. https://www.bmi.bund.de/DE/themen/moderne- verwaltung/verwaltungsrecht/meldewesen/meldewesen-node.html Access date: 18.11.2019.

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emails. This second set will serve as complementary data. It will provide real data for qualitative test of linguistic adaptation by identifying transfers of NS’ preferred openers strategies by NSB.

3.3 Methods

The data collection tool for the first set of data is the discourse completion task (henceforth DCT). The DCT was introduced by Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) in their cross-cultural pragmatic study on request and apology realisation strategies by native and non-native English speakers.

It has since been famous among pragmaticists in the elicitation of speech acts in discourse.

While some researchers follow the original pattern of one-sided role play, for instance, Kasanga and Lwanga-Lumu (2007), some adapt the discourse completion task pattern to double-sided role plays, for instance, Anchimbe (2018). In a one-sided role play DCT, a part of the proposed dialogue(s) is already constructed by the researcher to which participants will have to respond. In the double-sided pattern, participants are allowed the freedom to either play both roles in the dialogue(s) or chose which role they would like to play. This means that in the first, an adjacency pair is missing whereas in the second, both adjacency pairs are missing. The second pattern of DCT was used for data collection because of the communicative acts analytical approach followed in this work. I considered that it was necessary that students have the liberty to construct by themselves possible dialogues between them and their lecturers. This approach avoids the usual hindrance of the flow of conversation between interlocutors posed by DCT that offers only one-sided role play. It gives them the opportunity to construct dialogues from their respective perspectives and contexts without any interference from the researcher. For the analysis, it was important to capture the possible dialogue sequence, in which students’ preparatory and supportive acts like their head acts have proven to be equally essential in the cultural interpretation of their communication.

The DCT used has a simple structure. The questionnaire requested the following personal information of the respondents that could be relevant to the analysis, i.e. sex (male, female);

age group (20-25, 26-30, 31-35, 36-40, 40+), first language(s), highest educational qualification; course studied, town of residence, and country of origin. The three

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communicative acts investigated were to be realised in dialogues. The three situations were described in detail as follows:

Situation 1. Lecturer’s office on campus. You got delayed and arrive at the University one month after classes have started and realised that you have missed classes for a compulsory course. Normally, you would be excluded from attending the course for the rest of the semester except you get the permission of the lecturer to do so. Construct a possible dialogue below, in which you ask for permission to be allowed to attend the rest of the course.

Situation 2. Corridor on campus. You have missed the submission deadline of your homework by a week. After class, you run after the Lecturer to plead with him/her to accept it. Construct a possible dialogue of the encounter below.

Situation 3. Lecturer’s office on campus. Your examination paper has just been handed back to you and you realise you failed because the lecturer counted your marks wrongly. You go to the office to demand a recount of your marks and correction of your grade. Construct a possible dialogue below.

19 participants preferred to fill out hardcopy DCTs. The remaining 89 students filled them out electronically. An electronic survey was also set up with the same descriptions from the DCT.

Some participants filled and submitted on the online survey platform. The second set of data consisted of emails sent by NSB to their German lecturers during their first semester in Bayreuth.

3.4 Contextualisation of analytical terms

In this section, I will provide definitions and explanations to key terms in their context of use in the analysis.

3.4.1 Decorum

The word decorum is the English borrowing of the Latin decōrum. Although the term decorum is polysemic, there are sets of its meanings that fit into its use in this work. The Oxford

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Dictionary (2019) defines decorum in four categories. Some aspects of these categories fit into the use of the term decorum in this research. The relevant aspects are as follows:

1. That which is proper to the character, position, rank, or dignity of a (…) person.

2. That which is proper to the circumstances or requirements of the case: seemliness, propriety, fitness (…).

3. Propriety of behaviour; what is fitting or proper in behaviour or demeanour, what is in accordance with the standard of good breeding; avoidance of anything unseemly or offensive in manner.

4. A fitting or appropriate act

5. An act or requirement of polite behaviour; a decorous observance (…).

(Oxford Dictionary, 2019) The first aspect concerns social hierarchy. This is reflected in the student-lecturer relationship revealed in the dialogues analysed in this research. bottom-up perspective represented in this work. The second aspect relates to context. The third aspect is similar to the second, but further explanation emphasises culture, social norm and harmony. The fourth aspect refers to appropriateness, while the fifth involves politeness. Consequently, the terms referred in these definitions are used interchangeably in this work. Moreover, only a combination of the English meanings of these terms fully represents the social affiliations to the Nigerian concepts, eti ido, ezigbo omume, idowo and the rest from the other speech communities in Nigeria not mentioned in the theoretical framework. The use of the phrase, campus decorum, does not suggest the linguistic finesse performed by members of the academic community, but rather the communicative norms of student-lecturer interaction on campus. Therefore, the focus of the analysis in this study is not on “linguistic decorum” (Abrams and Harpham, 2008: 270) but on the linguistic realisation of decorum as defined above. Components of the chronological taxonomies of students’ linguistic performance of decorum (openers, apologies, complaints, requests, and closing statements) are contextualised below.

3.4.2 Preparatory acts

These are linguistic performances that precede the head act of request. The use of openers in the DCT questionnaires is significantly rich for pragmatic analysis. Hence, the analysis accounts for openers, too.

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3.4.2.1 Openers: Attention getters, greeting, address and familiarisation forms

In this work, openers are conversation starters, i.e. linguistic forms used by respondents to initiate the dialogues. Although in the western perspective an opener may be considered as only basic and so unqualified to be termed a conversation (Goffman 1971, Donaldson 1979, Warren 2006), a postcolonial perspective does not take openers for granted as such. For instance, Akindele (1990) argues that the act of greeting among the Yoruba people also functions as the act of giving information. As mentioned in chapter 1, with the use of certain address forms, speakers communicate social roles and expectations from their hearers. This applies both to the young and the old. Data from NS indicate invocation of social norms as a politeness strategy to achieve harmonious interactions with lecturers. These invocations by students and the corresponding responses by lecturers already indicate conversation between interlocutors. Following Anchimbe (2018), four types of openers are found in the available data: attention getters (e.g. excuse me, hello etc.), greetings (hello and good morning, referred to as h-greetings and g-greetings respectively), address forms (e.g. Sir, Ma, Madam, Prof., etc.), and familiarisation (e.g. how are you?). Simple structures are exemplified thus, attention getter/h-greeting/g-greeting + address form. A structure qualifies as complex when it includes familiarisation. The simple and complex h-greeting and g-greeting structures have been identified and represented in results. Examples of this will be discussed in the analytical section. In both groups, some respondents use openers to start conversations while some directly express apologies, complaints and requests.

3.4.2.2 Apology

An offence is a breach of social norms. When an offender desires social harmony, apology is inevitable. Kasanga and Lwanga-Lumu (2007: 65) represent this perspective in their definition of apology as “a redressive speech act for a face-threatening-act [...] to restore social harmony after an infraction of a social rule.” However, by using of ‘speech act’, they limit the act of apology to verbal expressions although their Setswana Politeness Framework also included non-verbal acts of apology. Trosborg (1995: 373) recognises both non-verbal and verbal forms of realising apology when explaining that “the act of apologizing requires an action or an utterance which is intended to ‘set things right’.” That being said, the verbal forms of apology

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realisation will be assessed in this work. The three situations in the DCT filled by respondents for this research present three cases of violation of social norms which demand an apology.

Situations 1 and 2 requires the student to apologize to the lecturer, while situation 3 sets up the lecturer as the potential apologizer. Interestingly, some participants in both groups include lecturers’ apology in their dialogues in situation 3. This will be discussed in the analysis, especially in comparison between the two groups and how it symbolizes relativity of student- lecturer relationship as a bottom-up hierarchical order across cultural contexts. As an FTA to speaker, the remedial act of apologising is carefully constructed by students to serve its primary aim of redress (Goffman 1971), especially since it deals with asymmetric interactions.

Cohen et al.’s (1986) model of five apology strategies provide a fitting analytical tool for respondents’ realisations of apology in that each realisation fully fits into one of these five strategies. The five strategies are the illocutionary force index device (henceforth IFID), acknowledgement of responsibility, explanation of the situations that led to the commission of offence, offer of repair, and the promise of forbearance. On the one hand, Cohen et al.

(1981) claim that IFID and responsibility are sufficient strategies for the act of apology in the west. On the other hand, Kasanga and Lwanga-Lumu (2007) find out that the repair strategy is inevitable for an appropriate apology in the Setswana culture. This goes for the most postcolonial African contexts. The results showed that, especially in formal situations, the offer of repair was an inevitable strategy in the realisation of polite apology in the Setswana context. In the Akan context reported by Obeng (1999), the act of apology is also more complex than a simple combination of IFID and responsibility. Hence, there is the need for a more practical framework like the postcolonial pragmatics for data in these contexts. Leech’s (1983:104) use of the term “convivial” to describe the act of apologising emphasizes its contrast to the act of complaint.

3.4.2.3 Complaint

A complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction and unacceptance. A complainant demands for an apology, whereas the one who apologises responds to a complaint. While the act of apologising goes in line with the social goal of harmony (Leech, 1983), the complaint goes against this goal (Place 1986, cf Trosborg 1995:312) since it is an FTA. Albeit, I agree with the arguments of Edmondson and House (1981: 145, cf. Trosborg 1995: 312) that on the grounds

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of complainee’s violation of the “hearer-supportive maxim”, which demands hearer consideration in performing speech acts, the act of complaining is justified. It is a given that misunderstandings in encounters, especially intercultural encounters, are inevitable. If communication must be successful, a room must be made for resolution. A complaint could set the stage for resolution of communicative conflicts. The question would rather be how to complain politely in given contexts in order to receive a polite response. In situation 3 on the DCTs distributed and in the emails provided by Nigerian students in Bayreuth, participants are found to launch complaints either as preparatory or as supportive acts to enable the achievement of their wants from the head act of request. As a result, a second set of five strategies have been curled from Trosborg’s (1995) eight categories to represent each style identified in the dialogues and emails constructed by Nigerian and German students. They are hints, IFID, focus on consequences, indirect accusation, and direct accusation. Realisations classified as hints have embedded in them implicit expressions of compliant. IFID is the opposite, in that the word complaint is explicit, as in I have a complaint. The next is the category for the mention of the impacts of lecturer’s miscalculation of students’ grades. i.e.

the mention of failure and the effects of the failure on students. Indirect accusation is the category for expression of accusation, but which is not hearer-oriented. Direct accusation is the group for rather hearer-oriented accusations. A similar approach to typologies is taken for categorisation of request strategies.

3.4.3 Head act: Requests

The word ask is often used interchangeably with the word request. One could merely ask for information or ask for a favour. The first is a mere inquiry to know the state of a thing/things while the second is a petition or supplication to have something done to change the state of a thing/things. It is the second to which Trosborg’s (1995:187) refers in her definition that a

“request is an illocutionary act whereby a speaker (requester) conveys to a hearer (requestee) that he/she wants the requestee to perform an act which is for the benefit of the speaker.”

This second meaning fits into the context of this study. When the object of request is a favour that would normally not be done if the request is not made (Searle 1969), the person making the request is at the mercy of the hearer. In this case, the speaker must find suitable ways of winning the favour of the hearer. Whereas mere request for information may not demand

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insistence, request for a favour does, especially when so much is at stake, as is the case for students vis-à-vis their lecturers. Data reveals that NS and GS respond in situation 1 based on these two definitions. On the one hand, the NS realise request as asking for a favour, on the other hand, the few GS who respond in this situation realise requests as mere inquiry of the possibility to still join the class or not. Therefore, when lecturers refuse at first, the NS insist, while the GS simply end the dialogue. The tool for categorisation of the realisation of requests is also adapted from Trosborg (1995). Five strategies are found, namely, hint, indirect (hearer oriented), indirect (speaker oriented), direct (hedged imperative) and direct (unhedged imperative). Here hint includes all expressions in which the word request is implicit and which are neither hearer- nor speaker-oriented. Indirect (hearer-oriented) refers to the hearer in the act of requesting while indirect (speaker-oriented) refers to speaker in the request style.

Direct (hedged imperative) is any direct request, which may not necessarily include any of the request IFIDs, request and ask, but are imperatives hedged with politeness markers according to the context of use. Direct (unhedged imperative), on the contrary to hedged imperatives are not constructed with the help of politeness markers in their contexts of production. In their effort to ask for a favour from their lecturers in the three situations described to them, students pay attention to certain pragmatic phenomena and so use those politeness markers that will ease their FTA in these bottom-up encounters. Again, strategies were selected according to use by students, which the results duly reflect.

3.4.4 Supportive acts

Supportive acts are meant to reinforce the head acts. When used with the goal of social harmony, they positively buttress the head acts. Otherwise, they irritate and cause more tension between interlocutors. Closing statements are used to end a conversation. In the same manner as supportive acts, they help to achieve either harmonious communication or irritation. Hence, these two are discussed in one section of the analysis. Closing statements are considered in this work as supportive acts. Following Anchimbe’s (2018:91) approach to supportive acts as “independent adjacency exchanges after the head act”, this combination is viable. Some dialogues do not involve head acts. For those which involve the head acts, the adjacency pairs after the head acts are mostly closing statements since students are shown to have used their negotiating skills in the early adjacency pairs of the dialogues. This is due to

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the power difference between the student and the lecturer. Moreover, discussing the supportive acts and closing statements in one section will enable the contextual interpretation of closing statements which play supportive roles to the dialogues as well as to the relationship between student and lecturer.

3.4.5 Challenges to methods

The first aspect of reflexiveness in this study is the researcher’s positionality. Data used in this study are collected from an emic perspective. However, for want of literature on the conceptualisations of politeness in the Annang, Efik and Ibibio ethnic groups, the researcher being an Annang, had also to play an informant role. Albeit, the researcher does not serve as an informant for any of the data used in the analysis. The suitability of theoretical and analytical frameworks for the data collected was constantly put into question and carefully selected. Relying on collected data and suitable frameworks enabled the observance of the research ethic of objective analysis. Further on ethics, all information on the DCTs and in the emails that mark participants’ personal identity are treated with the utmost confidentiality and so, totally excluded from this work. Moreover, in consideration of participants’

convenience and the feasibility of data collection, participants were mostly approached during holidays and in the evenings.

Multiple data collection strategies were used. Researchers had to re-strategize vis-à-vis the causes of delay of the data collection process longer than originally planned. Part of the change in plan was the decision for unnaturally occurring data. Only one target group, the NSB consented to participation in the collection of naturally occurring data, which were not fit for a cross-cultural study as intended. Reluctant participants expressed preference for the DCT questionnaires, hence their choice as a method. DCTs were presented in different formats and distributed according to participants’ choices. Some participants preferred hard copies, while some preferred softcopies. As would be expected of a computer-age, softcopies were most preferred by both NS and GS. An electronic survey was also set-up in accordance to suggestions gathered in the pilot study. Most NS used the electronic survey platform, while most GS filled soft copies in Microsoft Word formats. Social media platforms were also used to send as well as to receive DCT questionnaires and emails. NSB’s empirical data are used in comparison to the results derived from the unnaturally occurring data, i.e. the DCT.

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The identification of similarities in NS’ and NSB’s greeting structures validates the use of DCT questionnaires. This contradicts arguments against the use of unnaturally occurring data for academic studies (Clyne et al. 1991 cf. Kasanga and Lwanga-Lumu, 2007). In addition, the comments from participants that some situations are not usual in their context and so, they can not imagine dialogues in those situations are pointers to participants‘ reflexiveness and positionality. Thus, their responses to other situations are close to real data. The number of respondents was also of concern for the plausibility of findings. This ambition did not mar the eligibility checks on respondents. Their nationality and student status were the major criteria for participation. Other pragmatic phenomena such as age, the highest level of education, and the town of residence were collected and included in the discussions. These play vital roles in the power relations between student and lecturer and are taken into account in the analytical section. However, the models of communicative acts realisation strategies used in the analysis had to be adapted to suit the data collected.

This points to the necessity of further pragmatic studies towards development of suitable models for postcolonial data analysis. The next two chapters will be focused on the analysis of dialogues and confirmation of transfers in emails collected.

4 Strategies and social norms in preparatory acts

The analysis in this chapter and the next chapter will seek answers to research questions 1, 2 and 3. However, this chapter will be dedicated to the results of the quantitative and qualitative analysis on preparatory acts only. Results will be presented in tabular and exemplary forms.

Results will be discussed extensively. Strategies used and the social norms they invoke will be explored and interpreted in their respective contexts of use. Findings from openers will be compared with NSB emails in search for cases of transfer of NS’ openers strategies to NSB communication with their lecturers in Bayreuth. Then, each section, and finally, the chapter will end with a summary of the results and discussions.

4.1 Strategies and social norms in preparatory acts

Preparatory acts include openers (attention getters, greeting, address, and familiarisation forms), apologies, and complaints. The findings below will interpret them in their respective contexts of use.

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4.1.1 Strategies and social norms in attention getters

The use of attention getter and other openers by NS and GS in situation 1 is summarised in Table 5. There is significant similarity in the decision to not use the attention getter in this situation. All respondents but one GS avoid the use of attention getter.

Table 5: Attention getter and greeting structures used by NS and GS in situation 1

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Type Attention getter & NS GS

Greeting structure ________________ ________________

F. M. Total F. M. Total ___________________________________________________________________________

Simple Address 2 4 6 - - -

prep. acts Attention getter - - - - 1 1

H-greeting + Address - - - 1 0 1

H-greeting + Address + - - - 1 14 15

(Sur)name

G-greeting + Address 12 15 27 - - -

Complex G-greeting + 13 4 17 - - -

prep. Address + acts familiarisation

Total 27 23 50 2 15 17

The one GS who choses this strategy to get lecturer’s attention uses the phrase in example 1.

There is barely a need for attention getter in this situation since it occurs in lecturer’s office.

Example 1

You: Excuse me

NS have used this phrase in the second situation but in a structure which includes address forms. Therefore, the lack of politeness marker(s) in its structure makes it look impolite and therefore unsuitable in a formal and asymmetric setting, where the speaker is not only the

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subordinate but wants to ask a favour. Its avoidance by other GS also dismisses it as a polite way of approaching a lecturer even in the German context. In situation 2, attention getter is relevant since it takes place on the corridor after class, as shown in Table 6.

Table 6: Attention getters and greeting structures used by NS and GS in situation 2

___________________________________________________________________________

greeting structure ________________ ________________

F. M. Total F. M. Total ___________________________________________________________________________

Simple Attention getter - - - 2 1 3

prep. acts Attention getter + Address 6 1 7 - - -

Attention getter + Address - - - 11 1 12

+ (Sur)name

Address 6 5 11 - 2 2

Address + (Sur)name - - - - 1 1

H-greeting - - - - 1 1

H-greeting + Address - 1 1 1 - 1

(Sur)name

Complex G-greeting + 1 - 1 - - -

Total 27 23 50 24 19 45

It is assumed that the student is interrupting the lecturer’s departure from class. However, less than half of all respondents from both groups use this strategy. Only three GS use attention getter in the same way it is used in example 1. The other twelve GS use attention getters with a different structure, i.e., attention getter + address + (sur)name. This is illustrated in example 2 below.

Example 2

You: Excuse me, Mrs/Mr. XYZ

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It is the second most used structure by the GS in this situation. Therefore, it is important to note since it employs the structure which represents the politeness norms of address form and name-calling. This is considered appropriate in the German context. Albeit, the NS totally avoid this structure. They rather use attention getter + address. There is a vivid explanation for this choice. That is the name avoidance strategy as a politeness norm by younger persons in most postcolonial societies (Okafor, 1989; Anchimbe, 2011). As mentioned in the review section, a younger person who is polite should not call an older person by name. Moreover, persons of higher social status are not necessarily called by their names, too. Example 3 presents the structure that is rather preferred in a Nigerian context.

Example 3:

You: Excuse me, Sir

By using sir instead of mr./mrs., NS do not have to complete the structure with a name. The address forms sir, ma, madam, prof. are self-sufficient and do not require names. Situation 3 receives the same response rate like situation 1. Most respondents do not feel the need to use the attention getter. While four GS use the phrase in example 1, three NS opt for the structure in example 3.

In summary, about 40% of GS and only 20% of NS use attention getters. Therefore, the use of attention getter for lecturers is more fairly accepted in the German context than in the Nigerian context. And if one must use this in the Nigerian context, an appropriate address form must follow, and the name of the lecturer must be avoided. This finding does not relate to the emails collected since there is no need for the use of attention getters in emails. A fair comparison will be enabled in the summary of the next section because greeting is a component part of email writing.

4.1.2 Social norms in greeting forms

When a student goes into a lecturer’s office, they both greet. In example 4, it is interesting to see that some GS have rearranged the sequence of the first adjacency pair by making the lecturer the first speaker in the dialogue instead of the student.

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Example 4

Lecturer: Hello.

You: Hello.

Lecturer: How may I be of help?

You: I would like to know if I can still continue with your course this semester.

However, no NS has done this. It may not be important who greets first in the German context, but the younger person has the social role of greeting first in the Nigerian context (Akindele 1990). This social norm applies to campus interactions, too. The preferred greeting structure for GS in situation 1 is h-greeting + address + surname, again, a structure not used by any NS.

Example 5 represents NS’ first-choice structure, g-greeting + address. Howbeit, the second- choice structure is quite interesting to explore, namely, g-greeting + address + familiarisation.

Example 5

You: Good morning, Sir.

Table 6 shows that the two groups maintain the same preferences in situation 2. The NS favourite structure is g-greeting + address whereas the GS favourite structure is the h-greeting + address + (sur)name. Only two GS use the h-greeting and h-greeting + address structures respectively, while also only two NS use the h-greeting + address and g-greeting + address + familiarisation each.

The exceptional h-greeting + address structure in the NS serves as an attention getter and not as a greeting form. The respondent identifies as a male Yoruba. Another male Yoruba is found to use the same structure in one of the emails from NSB but with the g-greeting + address in quick succession. In this case, these two Nigerian respondents use the h-greeting + address only as attention getter and not as a formal greeting to addressees of higher status. This example is discussed here and not in the attention getters section to minimize complexity.

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Table 7 below illustrates the use of openers in situation 3. The favourite structure for GS is rather different in situation 3.

Table 7: Attention getter and greeting structures used by NS and GS in situation 3

___________________________________________________________________________

greeting structure ________________ ________________

F. M. Total F. M. Total ___________________________________________________________________________

Simple Modifier + Address 6 3 9 - - -

prep. acts Attention getter - - - - 4 4

Attention getter + Address 1 2 3 - - -

H-greeting - - - 24 15 39

H-greeting + Address - - - 1 - 1

(Sur)name

Complex G-greeting + 3 - 3 - - -

Total 27 23 50 26 21 47

That is the simple h-greeting, as seen in example 4. The key factor in this switch in greeting form is the constraint on the relationship between interlocutors. This is the same situation in which respondents are reported to use the communicative act of complaint as preparatory and supportive acts to their request for recount and correction of their grades. The annoyance of failure, especially an undue one, weighs in on the communication. Only three GS out of the forty-seven, who respond in this third situation, opt for the usual h-greeting + address + (sur)name pattern. Albeit, the NS favourite remains the g-greeting + address. Three NS still use the complex form, g-greeting + address + familiarisation, amidst the tension of grief. In any case, this may be exactly the strategy needed to ease the tension and make room for the request in the hope to receive a positive response.

In the summary presented in figure 1, even though GS preferred a different greeting form in the third situation, their two most preferred patterns are still within the h-greeting structure

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in the simple greeting category, namely, h-greeting and h-greeting + address + (sur)name. The NS are consistent with their choice of g-greeting + address. Still, it is remarkable that well over one-third of NS use the complex category, namely, with familiarisation. This conclusion for the NS, when compared with NSB emails, confirms the transfer of NS’ preferred strategies by NSB.

The simple and the complex categories are constantly used by NSB in emails to their lecturers in Bayreuth. Albeit, there are no comments on cases of irritation. Meta-information rather concerns the use of address forms by NSB.

4.1.3 Strategies and social norms in address forms

In an academic setting, one would expect students to address their lecturers with academic titles, especially because most lecturers in the university already have been awarded these titles. Considering the address forms preferred by 1 and 2 in figure 1, why do NS prefer the honorifics sir and the GS mr./mrs. to academic titles? In Anchimbe (2018:127) sir is also used the most by the Cameroonian and Ghanaian participants. This honorific is a legacy of colonial encounter with the English. It marks social ranking and distance between interlocutors. Since there is no use of a form of address for male superiors which performs the same easing function as ma, it could be said that the social distance between subordinates and male superiors are not easily negotiable. GS recognise males and females equally, the NS recognise them separately. The sum of the female honorifics madam and ma make up the second preferred address form by NS. Considering the patriarchal nature of the Nigerian as well as most postcolonial societies, I find the representation of female lecturers, though unequal, quite recommendable. It is also encouraging to find that some male NS also use these female address forms in their dialogues. This gives a beam of hope for women, especially in academia.

Moreover, the use of the bisemic ma as in example 6 is encouraging for Nigerian women in general. Ma can be used as the short form of madam or mama. Madam has a formal connotation while mama is an informal kinship term for mother. Whether as formal or informal, the use of ma in an academic setting is strategic.

Example 6:

You: I am a new student, Ma

Campus Decorum : The realisation of apologies, complaints and requests by Nigerian and German students